He waited for a moment then hummed the first line reflectively. ‘Yes, I thought I recognised it! “The Panikhat Panic Song”! We used to sing the same tune in the trenches but if I were to tell you the words we used Kitty would have me ejected.’

Some of them smiled and out of the corner of his eye he noticed Nancy begin to relax. The khitmutgar began silently to clear away the tea things and Joe went into his talk. He moved forward and sat facing them on the edge of a table. He had decided that these bold and lively women deserved nothing less than the truth as he now saw it, however unpalatable.

‘I know about fear. I know about death. And I’m not going to tell you not to worry your pretty little heads about the deaths that have been occurring on the station. I am going to tell you that you may have good cause to be afraid. You are members of a group which for a reason I have not yet ascertained is the target of a killer. And a very particular type of killer…’

Soft-footed, Naurung entered the room. He was wearing, not his usual police uniform, but the loose white outfit of a house servant, a red waistcoat and a blue turban. Joe went on talking, the women’s attention riveted on him. Naurung began to help the khitmutgar with the clearing of the table. Suddenly he dropped a plate which crashed to the ground and broke. Naurung exclaimed loudly and began to sweep the remains together. The khitmutgar advanced on him and Naurung, hissing invective at him, was hurried from the room. The women, who had all turned to stare at Naurung on hearing the noise, averted their eyes in embarrassment or distaste at the extraordinary scene and fixed their attention once more on Joe.

He continued to talk to them, concisely setting out the dates and details of the pre-war deaths and summarising his suspicions. Suddenly he broke off and reached into his pocket. He took out some sheets of paper and pencils and passed one’tb each lady.

‘Before we go on – and believe me there is a point to what I’m about to ask you to do – I want you to think back to what happened in this room five minutes ago. Take your pencil and write down a description of the Indian who came in to assist the khitmutgar. What was he wearing? What were his features like? What language was he speaking? What did he do?’

Puzzled looks were exchanged, pencil ends were chewed and short notes were written down. Joe collected the papers in and put them on the table by his side.

‘Coming now to someone you all knew,’ he went on, ‘- Peggy Somersham who died last week. I know you have been told that she committed suicide but I have to tell you that, like the others who preceded her, I fear she was murdered. Murdered and not by her husband. It is my intention to have the coroner’s verdict of suicide overruled.’

There was a murmur and a nodding of heads in approval of this.

He went carefully over the evidence he had collected and concluded, ‘There was one witness, a vital witness who unfortunately was allowed to go free after giving his statement…’

‘Bulstrode!’ someone interrupted. ‘The man’s an incompetent idiot! He should have locked him up and thrown the key away!’

‘The witness was an Indian. We do not have a good description of him although he was seen by several people and even interviewed by the officials. From the accounts I’ve given you, you will have noted that at or near each murder scene an Indian of one sort or another was noticed. Where are they? Who are they? One man or several? How can they, or he, just have slipped into the sand? I’ll tell you how. People are very bad observers. Ask any group of six onlookers to describe a man who has just knifed another in a London street and you will be given six different (and possibly all incorrect) descriptions. Let’s take this group of six. I asked you to write a description of the Indian servant who created a disturbance a few minutes ago.’

Joe leafed though the notes, discarding one that said, ‘It was Naurung, you fool! Nancy ’ and read out a sample:

‘ “It was an Indian. He was wearing Indian clothes and he shouted in Indian. He broke something. A teacup?’

‘ “It was Kitty’s bearer Ahmed. Tall, dark, blue jacket, beard, yellow turban. Broke a teacup. Kitty won’t be pleased! Spoke Hindustani.’

‘ “Vicious-looking. Elderly. Red turban. Medium height. Struck the khitmutgar and swore in Hindu.’

‘ “Young. Short. Shifty-looking with a large moustache. Red turban, green jacket. Spilled a cup of tea on Khit’s foot. He spoke Bengali.’

‘These descriptions reflect well on your imagination, ladies, but less well on your powers of observation! Come in, Naurung!’ Joe called.

Naurung appeared smiling and bowing to the ladies who gasped when they recognised him, laughed and turned to each other pointing out that it was Naurung Singh the policeman in disguise.

‘Not in disguise. Merely wearing clothes you are not expecting to see him wear and appearing in a context in which you would not expect to see him. He has no connection with Kitty’s household in your experience so you did not recognise him. Thank you, Naurung,’ said Joe, and he left exchanging a joke with the khitmutgar who had obviously enjoyed the whole performance.

‘Well, you didn’t get many details right, did you? By the way – he broke a plate – an old one, with Kitty’s permission! He was speaking Hindustani and he said something unrepeatable about the khitmutgar’s parentage. And your descriptions of the man himself were far from accurate. Although you all in fact have seen him on many occasions. The reason for this? Because he is Indian. You simply do not register brown faces with any interest or accuracy. And this is precisely the failing that enables our killer to get close to his victim unnoticed and then get away.’

‘So what are you suggesting, Commander?’ piped up Lucy Meadows. ‘That we should all sleep with a hockey stick under our bed and avoid all brown faces? Pretty jolly difficult in India, you know!’

‘I think the Commander is trying to tell us,’ drawled Phoebe Carter, ‘that we should give up and go home to England next March. Can you guarantee that the streets of London are any safer, Mr Sandilands? Have you caught Jack the Ripper yet?’

Her jibe earned a ripple of laughter.

‘Mrs Carter,’ said Joe seriously, ‘you would, I can tell you, be at far less risk of your life in Whitechapel where the murder rate is less than one per year among a population of many thousands, than here in Panikhat where one out of six of you could well die next March. And the drawing-rooms of the home counties, I believe, are still reckoned to be entirely safe… though there is the ever present danger of an attack of terminal boredom… and, seriously, this is an option, should our man still be at large next year.

‘But I wanted to say, in conclusion, this: I believe no one here is in danger before next March. The man I’m looking for is not a deranged killer. He is following a plan – I am tempted to say, a sacrificial ritual. I’m going to work out what scheme or compulsion lies behind the killings and bring the man to justice. It’s my opinion that there is some religious or quasi-religious motive at the bottom of all this, a motive which as Westerners we may be hard pushed to understand. We have all heard of the religion and despicable (to us) habits of the Thugs who infested this part of India until quite recent times…’

Again the girls nodded in understanding. Thuggee. The word still had the power to terrify. The thousands of innocent travellers, garotted and buried in mass graves in the last century and all in the name of sacrifice to the blood-thirsty goddess Kali, were not forgotten.

‘… it is quite possible that our man is acting under the same kind of compulsion.’

‘So what can you do, Commander, to get hold of this man before he strikes at another one of us? You’re only here for a short while and you say Bulstrode’s let him go!’ said Jane indignantly. ‘How can you get him back? He could be anywhere in India by now!’